


Stellar Phenomena (And Other Turn-Ons)

by Persiflage



Series: Kissing Prompts [2]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Competent Women, F/F, First Kiss, Kissing, Michael Being a Science Nerd, POV Character of Color, Pre-Canon, Shenzhou Era, science is sexy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 16:24:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19023580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/pseuds/Persiflage
Summary: Pre-canon: Michael is excited about astronomy. Philippa is excited by her excitement.





	Stellar Phenomena (And Other Turn-Ons)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nomisunrider](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomisunrider/gifts).



> Another of my 'Kissing Prompt' ficlets, for the prompt: _Speaking normally, then after the kiss their voice is hoarse_. I had fun with this. 
> 
> (Oh who am I kidding? I've had fun with all of them so far!)
> 
> For nomisunrider, even though they didn't request a prompt, because I love all their fics to the stars and back!

Michael is in the Captain’s Ready Room, waxing lyrical about the beauties of the stellar nursery that the _Shenzhou_ is observing. The rest of the Bridge crew, aside from herself and Captain Georgiou, are observing from the Bridge, but Philippa had invited Michael to come and watch ‘the old-fashioned way’, and Michael had jumped at the offer, not just because it’s fun to use a manual telescope, especially one that she knows is a treasured heirloom of Philippa’s matrilineal line, but also because she always appreciates the chance to spend quality time alone with the other woman, and doing so is a rare occurrence. It’s even rarer to do so in what Michael, in her own mind at least, considers a romantic setting.

She comes to the end of her peroration and becomes aware that the Captain is standing right beside her, and is even in the act of cupping Michael’s elbow. She straightens up, aware that she is flushed with enthusiasm, and when Philippa neither speaks nor removes her hand, she raises an eyebrow, before asking quietly, “Is everything all right, Captain?”

“Yes, Commander.” Philippa’s response is immediate, but Michael doesn’t feel convinced, particularly when the Captain slightly tightens her grip on Michael’s elbow.

“Philippa? Do you feel quite well?”

“Very well, thank you Michael.”

She frowns, then reaches across her body to clasp Philippa’s fingers, which are warm and supple to her touch. She slides her fingers higher and finds the Captain’s pulse point, and frowns again when she discovers that Philippa’s heart rate is elevated. Not to alarming levels, certainly, but it is still noticeably higher.

“Philippa,” she tries again as she disengages her elbow from her Captain’s grasp to wrap her arm around the other woman’s shoulders. “What is it?” 

She guides them across to the couch, noting that Philippa’s rate of respiration has also increased slightly. She’s just wondering whether she ought to call for Doctor Nambue when Philippa turns into her personal space and lifts her hands to cup her face. Michael feels her eyebrows rise rapidly, and then Philippa’s mouth lands on her own and her brain seems to short circuit entirely. Being kissed by Philippa Georgiou is, it turns out, as joyously spectacular an experience as witnessing a stellar nursery in action. 

She isn’t aware of wrapping her other arm around Philippa, nor of being guided to take a seat on the couch in the corner of the Captain’s Ready Room. She’s not even aware, except on a transcendental level, of being kissed by Philippa: her body responds autonomously to the experience. The firm pressure of soft, supple lips against her own, the slide of a clever tongue past her teeth to skate over her palette, or tangle with her own tongue, and the mingling of their breath seem to be happening to someone else as Michael feels as if she’s been taken out of herself. Kissing has never been akin to an out-of-body experience before, but at the same time, she’s never kissed Philippa Georgiou before – perhaps she needs a new paradigm by which to measure what’s happening.

Eventually reality filters back in and she registers the pressure of the pads of Philippa’s fingertips against her skin, the way her own rate of respiration and heart rate are slightly elevated, and the warmth of Philippa’s breath where it brushes against her mouth and nose.

“Are you all right, Michael?” the Captain asks, as if from the wrong end of a telescope, and it takes her a moment longer to kick her brain from its stupor and answer.

“Quite all right, thank you, Philippa,” she answers, registering that her voice seems remarkably hoarse – as if she’s been shouting or screaming for hours. How peculiar, she thinks. “You kissed me.”

The Captain smiles luminously. “And you kissed me back,” she says. 

“Of course,” Michael answers, still hoarse. “How could I not?”

That earns her a warm chuckle. “I ought, really, to have asked for your permission first,” she admits, “but listening to your discourse on the phenomenon of a stellar nursery rather made me forget myself.”

“It is a rather overwhelming phenomenon,” Michael agrees, but before she can say any more a peal of delighted laughter interrupts, and she gives the Captain a somewhat baffled look.

“As delightful as the view outside is, Michael,” Philippa says, “it was not that, but rather yourself talking about it, that caught me out.”

“Me?” 

“You, Commander Michael Burnham,” agrees the Captain. “You are an even more remarkable phenomenon. Listening to you talking enthusiastically about a subject that you know so much about is, I have discovered, a serious turn on for me, which was why I kissed you.”

“Captain?” Michael says hoarsely. 

“Yes?”

“Could you – that is to say – would you mind –” Michael’s a little annoyed to discover that asking her Captain to kiss her again is a lot harder than she’d anticipated. Fortunately for her, Philippa seems to understand what she wants, because she shifts closer, then reaches up to cup Michael’s cheeks again, and that’s how she finds herself being kissed into actual speechlessness for the first time in her life. It is a quite remarkable experience.


End file.
